The recent spate of articles in American media savaging Senator Barack Obama, all by White Americans (naturally), and keeping Hillary Clinton’s candidature alive in the face of obvious public yearning for change, suggests heavy duty behind-the-scenes manoeuvres by corporate America. In an era when Uncle Sam believes it is on the verge of achieving world dominion for its corporate shareholders, the unseen men who control Washington will not let a Black immigrant with questionable commitment to white corporate culture come too close to the White House. Not that Obama was ever going to make it to the White House; yet now it seems even the Democratic Party nomination may be too much for some to stomach.
Multi-billionaire and political philanthropist, George Soros, an avid supporter of the Democratic Party, would be among those uncomfortable with this idea. It is well known that Soros played a key role in the Asian Crisis of the 1990s, and the ‘coloured’ revolutions in former Soviet Republics. Now that India and China have opened their economies to globalisation, they could face similar risks. The Executive Intelligence Review feels Soros is the public face of Rothschild bankers. Soon after the Asia Crisis, Soros himself claimed: “If there was ever a man who would fit the stereotype of the Judeo-plutocratic Bolshevik Zionist world conspirator, it is me,” (Sydney Morning Herald interview, November 15, 1997).
As one of the most audacious mega-speculators in the world, Soros positioned himself to serve Anglo-American banking interests and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), striking at the economies and political sovereignty of East European nations. Australian writer Peter Myers notes Soros played a major role in restructuring the Polish economy along with former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker (later North American chairman of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission); Citibank vice-chairman H. Anno Ruding (ex-IMF); and Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs. A key role in spreading the ‘free market’ economics that has destroyed nations is played by the Soros’ Open Society Fund, its network of institutions and foundations, not to mention human rights NGOs.
In Serbia, until the 1999 NATO bombings to subdue Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the Soros Fund operated a Civil Center in Pristina, Kosovo, to fight for the national independence of the Albanian Muslim majority. In Belgrade, it operated ‘Radio B-92,’ which played a major role in the anti-Milosevic student riots in 1996-7.
It goes without saying that such initiatives can succeed only if significant actors are removed from public life. A common trick is to malign them as ‘communists, fascists, reactionaries’; sometimes they are kidnapped and taken to The Hague for trial as international criminals (for crimes that cannot be proven). Still others vanish at the hands of ‘invisible death squads’; after the removal of Milosevic, a number of prominent persons were murdered in Serbia. The Soros Fund Management operates hedge funds with $US 18 billion in assets; these make large highly leveraged bets on movements in stocks, currencies bonds and commodities, thus playing havoc in foreign markets.
The Soros network of foundations and institutes stretch across Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Yugoslavia. They provide scholarships to Burmese dissidents and funds for radio broadcasts into Burma in support of Aung San Suu Kyi (naturally).
Western observers say that contrary to the conventional wisdom that socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe due to systemic weaknesses and the inability of the political elite to garner popular support, the role played by Soros was critical. From 1979, he gave $ 3 million per annum to Poland’s Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union (the latter recently claimed that the election of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was not free and fair). In 1984, he opened the Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars to the opposition. By eroding established political structures, he helped pave the way for Eastern Europe’s colonization by global capital.
Yugoslavia was targetted because the Slavs repeatedly elected the Socialist Party of Slobodan Milosevic. Then in 1991, Soros launched the Open Society Institute and pumped over $100 million to the anti-Milosevic opposition, publishing houses and ‘independent’ media like Radio B92. When Milosevic was finally removed to The Hague tribunal, the charges of war crimes and genocide framed against him were collected (read made up) by the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch!
It is pertinent that for the West, an ‘open’ society is not one that respects human rights and freedoms, but one open to western capitalist exploitation. George Soros has the knack of making a fortune in every country he works to open. In Kosovo, he spent $50 million to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, which has enormous reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals said to be worth around $5 billion. This was the modus operandi all over Eastern Europe – ruin a country and its economy and then move in to buy valuable state assets at throwaway prices.
Organiser, 16 March 2008
